Aerial work platform is an advanced aerial working mechanical device, and is capable of significantly improving efficiency, safety, and comfort of operators at height, and is also capable of reducing labor. Accordingly, it is widely employed in developed countries. This aerial work platform is also extensively used in China in many fields such as urban street lamp maintenance, tree trimming or the like. With rapid development of Chinese economy, aerial work platform is increasingly required in many situations such as engineering construction, industry installation, equipment repair, workshop maintenance, ship manufacture, electric power, municipal construction, airport, communications, city park, and transportation.
A prior art aerial work platform has a control device disposed on an operation platform or in a cab of a vehicle. In case of arranging the control device on the operation platform, control is realized by an operator standing on the operation platform who manipulates vertical movement and other action of the operation platform through a control device. The operator and control device move for example up and down together with the operation platform. In this situation, it is hard for the operator to control the aerial work platform on the ground. Instead, the operator must stand on the operation platform to control the entire aerial work platform, and this result in inconvenience. In latter case, the operator locates in the cab to manipulate vertical movement and other actions of the operation platform through the control device. In this situation, the operator must stay in the cab which is a closed or semi-closed space. This will obstruct sight of the operator or form a blind area, thus causing failure for the operator to accurately manipulate the aerial work platform. To realize intended control purpose, the operator may be required to repeat the same actions upon the aerial work platform for many times. For example, to raise the operation platform up to a certain height, the operation platform must be raised or lowered many times. Furthermore, the operator has to frequently move his head out of the cab to check visually the height of the operation platform or another person outside of the cab may be necessary to coordinate the operator inside the cab. As a result, this kind of operation platform control is with less efficiency. Moreover, this kind of control is greatly restricted and inconvenient.
Of course, with rapid development of the society and progress of technology, for some arm-type aerial work platform, a control device is laterally mounted on a turret of the vehicle such that the operator standing on the ground is able to perform operations upon the control device. However, as the control device is fixedly mounted on the turret and in turn it rotates together with the turret, following rotation of the turret, the operator must also adjust his location accordingly to effectively control the device, thereby resulting in inconvenience for the operator.
Moreover, all above control means feature securing the control device to a corresponding location. When the control device is in an idle condition, it is hard to hide the control device for protective purpose. This always exposed control device is easily subject to dust and aging. Furthermore, when not in use, the control device also occupies a large area and this causes inconvenience to the operator and appearance is not good.
Therefore, there is a need for an improved control device construction and/or mounting means and corresponding aerial work platform to overcome drawbacks mentioned above.